Has the sport of boxing seen its brightest days?

I remember being a girl sitting on my father’s lap and waiting for the boxing matches to begin. He knew who Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, Leon Spinks, and Larry Holmes were. He was obsessed with the anticipation that would surround these fights, everyone in the family chose their winner and hoped that that fighter would have the biggest heart.

I also heard about Don King. A fight promoter who had his own agenda, and it seemed like most people thought of him as a suspect. When I understood Mr. King’s position in my life, I also realized that boxing had a dark side. I could not believe that this sport of which millions of people look at each other with their eyes in the main events, the matches can be fixed.

Also, it came to my attention that boxing fights have probably been rigged since the days of Jake LaMotta, who admitted his involvement in a fixed fight, possibly even going back to Jack Johnson.

Although even with all this unethical behavior, you still felt that boxing matches were going to be good, competitive, and mostly fair. In the last 10 to 15 years, the world of boxing seems to be falling apart. After the dominant era of Mike Tyson, we looked to the next boxing legend to take over the next generation, but it never happened.

To make matters worse for the boxing world, other fighting sports began to come into play and were taken seriously. Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), for example, gained popularity in part because the winners are more obvious. There is less room to judge mistakes. There is less room for fixed fights.

We are at a point in boxing history where most people don’t know who the heavyweight champion is. Most people don’t care. You still hear about a couple of names like Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao; even though Floyd is in jail right now for being a gentleman with his girlfriend (sarcasm), and Manny just got caught up in ANOTHER murky fight against Timothy Bradley where most of the world saw this as an easy win for Pacquiao, yet the judges gave the fight to Bradley.

Now I feel like boxing is a dying sport that is going nowhere quickly. If I want to watch a fixed fight, I turn to professional entertainment wrestling, and if I want to watch a war, I can watch the UFC. It’s a shame that the excitement and anticipation of these boxing matches no longer shine on the world like they used to. It will take a lot to bring boxing to a place where credibility is important and the champions are hungry.